Unbundling dynamic capabilities for inter-organizational collaboration

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore two distinct subsets of dynamic capabilities that need to be deployed when pursuing innovation through inter-organizational activities, respectively, in the contexts of broad networks and specific alliances. The authors draw distinctions and explore potential interdependencies between these two dynamic capability reservoirs, by integrating concepts from the theoretical perspectives they are derived from, but which have until now largely ignored each other – the social network perspective and the dynamic capabilities view. Design/methodology/approach The authors investigate nanotechnology-driven R&D activities in the 1995–2005 period for 76 publicly traded firms in the electronics and electrical equipment industry and in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry, that applied for 580 nanotechnology-related patents and engaged in 2,459 alliances during the observation period. The authors used zero-truncated Poisson regression as the estimation method. Findings The findings support conceptualizing dynamic capabilities as four distinct subsets, deployed for sensing or seizing purposes, and across the two different inter-organizational contexts. The findings also suggest potential synergies between these subsets of dynamic capabilities, with two subsets being more macro-oriented (i.e. sensing and seizing opportunities within networks) and the two other ones more micro-oriented (i.e. sensing and seizing opportunities within specific alliances). Practical implications The authors show that firms differ in their subsets of dynamic capabilities for pursuing different types of inter-organizational, boundary-spanning relationships (such as alliances vs broader network relationships), which ultimately affects their innovation performance. Originality/value The authors contribute to the growing body of work on dynamic capabilities and firm-specific advantages by unbundling the dynamic capability subsets, and investigating their complex interdependencies for managing different types of inter-organizational linkages. The main new insight is that the “linear model” of generating more innovations through higher inter-firm collaboration in an emerging field paints an erroneous picture of how high innovation performance is actually achieved

Organizational Culture and Relationship Skills

While both the strategic management and the network literature recognize the importance of inter-firm relationships for explaining competitive advantage, the question why firms differ in their ability to benefit from these relationships is rarely addressed.This paper aims to begin to fill this gap in the literature. We argue that organizational culture is an important factor influencing the relationship skills of a firm, defined as a firm s ability to manage its ties with other firms, whether these are customers, suppliers, or service providers. We assume relationship skills to be especially relevant for the formation and maintenance of close and durable transaction ties.We test our model on a dataset of 127 Dutch inter-firm relations and find general support.Specifically, we find that firms with organizational cultures characterized by an orientation towards stability and predictability, a positive orientation towards innovation, and not characterized by a strong focus on immediate results, score high on relationship skills.Relationship skills, in turn, are found to have a positive influence on the outcomes of inter-firm relationships in terms of learning, achieving innovations and gaining new contacts, but not in terms of immediate (financial) results.corporate culture;interorganizational relations;networks;strategic management;stability;alliance;Netherlands

The Conceptual Framework for Business Process Innovation: Towards a Research Program on Global Supply Chain Intelligence

This paper proposes a research program on Business Process Innovation: Towards Global Supply Chain Intelligence. Few words are more ubiquitous in business or society today than "innovation". This reflects that businesses are striving for ways to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex and connected world (IBM 2006). Most industrial supply chains today are globally scattered and nearly all organizations rely on their Enterprise Information Systems (ES) for integration and coordination of their activities. In this context innovation inevitably is driven by advanced information technology. Organizations today are required not only to operate effective business processes but they also need to accommodate to changing business conditions at an increasing rate. Consequently the ability to develop and implement new processes driven by the Enterprise Information Systems is a central competence in most industries, and furthermore it is a critical practice for a global enterprise. The next practice in Global Supply Chain Management is Business Process Innovation. Business Process Innovation is the transformation of a global supply chain driven by a new advanced Enterprise Information Systems technology. This technology holds the potential to "close the control loop", but until now few organizations have managed to unleash the full potential of global supply chain intelligence. Thus, there is an emerging need for managing the transformation and for new approaches that will lead to robust global supply chains. This paper presents a conceptual framework for Business Process Innovation. A research proposal based on five interrelated topics is derived from the framework. The research program is intended to establish and to develop the conceptual framework for business process innovation and to apply this framework in a global supply chain context. These topics are presented in the following sections, but first the background for the program is discussed.No keywords;

Human side of collaborative partnerships: a micro-foundational perspective

The research on collaborative partnerships has accumulated a vast body of knowledge, which has assisted us with comprehending several complex organizational phenomena, including mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances, joint ventures, and entrepreneurial partnerships. Yet, the existing studies have not paid sufficient attention to the human side factors. We join the current conversation within the micro-foundations perspective of management and organization studies by suggesting that investigating the human side factors as the micro-foundations of collaborative partnerships can advance our collective understanding of the phenomena in important ways. This article has three general objectives. First, we show that collaborative partnerships have been a long-standing issue in management and organization studies and provide an overview of the puzzles that informed and motivated this special issue. Second, we highlight the key insights and contributions of the papers included in this special issue by reviewing their theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches and findings. Finally, we outline a future research agenda on the human side of collaborative partnerships that can help advance management and organization studies

Hybrid organizations as a strategy for supporting new product development

Alliances between large, well-established corporations and highly creative small companies or consultancies can be an effective method for promoting innovation

Technological Innovation Performance Analysis Using Multilayer Networks: Evidence from the Printer Industry

Department of Management EngineeringThe importance of collaboration and technology boundary spanning has been emphasized in other inquiries into technological innovation. Therefore, this research project first tried to investigate the effect of collaboration on technology boundary spanning. Then, we investigated the effect of collaboration and technology boundary spanning on technological innovation within a firm by using a multilayer network to analyze patent data. The aim of this paper is to provide new insight into the process of analyzing patent data using multilayer networks. This empirical study is based on a sample of 408 firms within the printer industry from 1996 to 2005. Starting with a theoretical discussion of R&D collaboration, technology boundary spanning and innovation performance, the importance of a firm???s collaboration and technology boundary spanning in its technology innovation performance was empirically analyzed using patent data. We followed changes in collaboration networks, technology class networks and the connection between them and tried to find the meaning of those changes in firms??? technology innovation performances. We used degree centrality within the collaboration network and the ratio of collaborated patents to the total number of patents in order to measure a firm???s collaboration and formulated technology boundary spanning represented by exploitation and exploration by using edges of the multilayer network. As dependent variables, we used the number of patents and the average number of citations received over three, five, and 10 years to measure the firm???s quantitative and qualitative innovation performance respectively. The results of the analysis can be summarized as follows: a firm???s collaboration has positive effects on both exploitation and exploration. Firms with more collaborations show higher quantitative innovation performances while firms with more collaborations exhibit lower qualitative innovation performance. Exploitation has a positive impact on a firm???s quantitative innovation performance while exploration has negative effects on a firm???s quantitative innovation performance. The relationship between a firm???s exploration activities and a firm???s qualitative innovation performance manifests as an inverted U-shape. On the other hand, a firm???s exploitation activities have a U-shape relationship with the firm???s qualitative innovation performance. The implication of this study is that multilayer networks can be used to analyze patent data. This study used multilayer networks to formulate the exploitation and exploration only. However, in further research it can be utilized to find the hub firms that fuse technologies.clos

CROSSING ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARY’S EFFECT ON PARADIGMATIC SHIFT AND THE IMPLICATION TO MARKETING STRATEGY OF AN ORGANIZATION

This paper studies the paradigmatic shift as the effect on the crossing organizational boundaries activities. Boundary crossing as part of specific function of organizations is common to organization theories. Nevertheless, the increasing and strong rate of occurrence of the crossing boundary activities is considered important today as the consequence of the technological revolution in information and communication technology coupled with the future technologies. Crossing boundaries influence the people involved and the institutional sets. The relationships within the boundaries are increasingly dynamic. Hence, this, in turn, may lead to paradigmatic shift. From the perspective of organization and innovation studies these processes are to a great extent attractive since they may create different conditions the existing literatures on organization as well as innovation, and consequently, on marketing. Therefore, this paper aims at studying the marketing strategy response of an organization by identifying states that emerge or condition that may be created as the paradigms shifted